Sunday, October 4, 2015

Recording: Cousins

Artist: Cousins

Songs: Phone + unknown*

Recorded at Christie Pits Park – Garden Stage (Bloor Ossington Folk Festival V), September 19, 2015.

Cousins - Phone

Cousins - unknown

You can read my general notes on the festival here. In the year-and-a-half or so since I last saw 'em, there's been some big shifts for Cousins. Now playing as a trio, Aaron Mangle is joined by Jay Crocker (who I recently saw performing as Joyfultalk) and Dicey Parks. That gives the project a more aggressive crunch than the gloriously-ramshackle propulsion they offered when I first encountered them. But in the cool of the night, as the pre-autumnal chill was forestalled by the warmth of a tent full of packed-in bodies, this was still pretty effective stuff. And it's nice to see that Mangle's lyrical stance is more contemplative than the party-on presentation, with ecological musings and bantering asides that Canada is "not a just country". In that regard, the new song heard here, which was played solo as an encore, shows he's still got weighty matters on his mind.

* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

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